Caesars Entertainment Chairman and CEO Gary Loveman, who took a gamble working for the company after teaching at Harvard for a decade, will share his insights with the Haas community in a talk at 12:30 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 5, in the Wells Fargo Room.
Loveman's talk will kick off the Dean's Speaker Series for the fall semester. To register, visit the Dean's Speaker Series website as the event date approaches: haas.berkeley.edu/haas/about/deansspeakers.html.
After graduating from Wesleyan University in 1982, Loveman worked for the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston and then earned a PhD in economics from MIT in 1989. That same year, at the age of 29, Loveman accepted a teaching position at Harvard Business School.
Loveman became known for a class called Service Management: a mix of marketing, human resources, and operations. According to a 2004 article in Fortune, he also attracted the attention of the corporate world. Among the companies courting him for advice was Harrah’s. Then-CEO Phil Satre was so impressed that he offered Loveman a job.
Loveman left Harvard for Harrah’s in 1998 on a two-year sabbatical—he wasn’t sure it would work out. "But the problem was, I loved it,” Loveman told Fortune. By 2001 he was president. When Satre retired in late 2002, Loveman took over as CEO. By 2005 he had built Harrah’s into the world’s largest gaming company, in part by leading its acquisition of Caesars Entertainment, which lent the new company its name.
Loveman also serves as a director of Coach Inc. and FedEx.
This event is made possible in part by the Mary Josephine Hicks Distinguished Speaker Series Fund.